I’m misusing Discourse as some kind of Wiki/Memo app (or blog, if you like) to document great code or links that I came across. Those kind of postings usually do not need/attract replies.
I’m having too few users/readers to contribute something valuable.
All the things I put in my Discourse instance could have been put into my WordPress blog instead, too, but I love Discourse so much that I absolutely want to support it and use it by having my own instance of it.
The “summary bar” as you call it only shows up for big topics with lots of replies. I dont know the cutoff or if there is any appetite for adding an admin setting to display it always or after an admin settable number of replies.
If number of views is important you can always set up google analytics.